A material store is known, which has stacking frames arranged transversely of, and aligned with one another in storage space direction. They are separated from one another by lanes for material transport. The frames include shelving units with carrier arms arranged one above another, extending in the direction of the storage space and secured on vertical shelving supports for the material or the magazines. The gantry crane, which bridges over the frames of the material store and is mobile in the direction of the storage space has vertical crane supports. Carrier brackets are movable up and down on the crane supports by means of carriages or cages. The carrier brackets extend horizontally into the region of the material store for moving the material up and down, by means of a load cross-piece carried by the brackets or by grasping the ends of the magazines or pallet boxes. The gantry crane is movable in the lanes, as well as transversely of the lanes.
In known apparatus of this nature the carrier brackets can lift the magazines containing the material out of the shelving compartments formed by the carrier arms, move them horizontally into the lanes, then drive them up in the lanes and finally bring them over the top of the material store to a position where by renewed lowering, for example in a lane, they can be brought to an apparatus for further handling of the material in rod form.
As shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,778,325, Stolzer and Blust, the possibility also exists of employing the carrier brackets for taking up a rod material support beam. The support beam extends across the crane and is equipped over the length of the rod-like material with fork-like prongs, so that with the aid of this cross-piece or beam it is possible to take out of the shelf compartments individual rod-like material which has been deposited individually in the compartments and to transport such material further in the above-described manner.
The known apparatus have proved their value, especially in as much as they are versatile in use, namely equally for material in rod form contained in magazines and also, with the aid of the load cross-member, for material deposited singly in the shelf compartments.
It is however disadvantages that the shelf compartments and magazines deposited in them must be freely accessible for the carrier brackets over their full area of the magazine ends, with which the necessity is combined of accommodating the shelf unit supports sufficient cross-section necessary for the load carrying capability formation of the shelf units within a region lying between the shelving compartments arranged on both sides of the shelf support. This results in a relatively great width of the shelf supports in the storage space direction. A correspondingly wide formation of the shelving supports is also necessary transversely of the storage space direction and in the longitudinal direction of the material. This requires considerable space in each case in the longitudinal direction of the storage space, which in the case of a more extensive material store is correspondingly added over several shelving units arranged in the longitudinal direction of the storage space. However, transversely of the longitudinal direction of the storage space this also requires corresponding space, which necessitates a corresponding width of span of the gantry cane, which is compounded due to the conditions existing equally on both sides of each shelving unit.
A further disadvantage of the known apparatus consists in that the carrier brackets which are fitted on the crane supports as rigid even though upwardly and downwardly movable structures, may be driven not only during the handling of the material that may possibly be contained in magazines, in their transport only over the shelf units in the longitudinal direction of the storage space, but that they must also travel the same paths on empty journeys.